I was in my local Waterstones the other day. Like most people, I went in there to take photos of books that I could later download onto my Kindle.

There was a sort of bargain bin/table full of dog-eared and soiled stock, and on top of the pile was a tatty copy of a Doctor Who tabletop role-playing game. I wasn't surprised that they were effectively chucking it out - what modern kid would ever want that? - but I was taken aback that there had even been a role-playing game released at any point in the last 15 years.

I mean, I know that Warhammer 40k is still a thing. Games Workshop isn't what it was, but there's the odd store still open on the occasional high street, usually with a bunch of 14 year-olds sat in a dingy backroom with a grown man, who probably hasn't even had a CRB check.

But the golden age of the tabletop role-playing game is long gone, the power of the mind's eye superseded by the power of the graphics processor.

THE COOL KIDSAs I'm sure I've made clear on numerous occasions, I wasn't one of the cool kids at school. Yet I wasn't quite a nerd either. Maths and science bounced right off me. I was too impatient to read books. I didn't have a clue about computers, unlike the majority of my peer group.

Anything I was good at was merely because I'd found ways to skip corners. And yet, I liked video games. I liked comics. I liked - as I discovered - role-playing games, and so I became lumped in as another "Computer Boy".

In fact, the name of the Digitiser character "Computer Boy" came courtesy of some tall, ginger lad, in the year above me... who one lunchtime caught my mates and I reading what he assumed was a computer magazine. He sneered at us: "Ewww... Computer boys reading their computer magazine!".

Which irritated me no end, because it wasn't a computer magazine - it was a magazine about science-fiction. So, y'know... now who looks stupid?

TASTE ITMy first taste of role-playing was probably Warlock of Firetop Mountain, the inaugural book in the Fighting Fantasy series - co-written by no less a figure in the future of the games industry than Ian Livingstone ("I presume").

​You know those books, right? "If you want to fight the skeleton, turn to page 48... If you want to run away, turn to page 25"...

A mate of mine had brought his copy of Citadel of Chaos to school - and it appeared to me to be the best thing ever. Yet I never wanted his sloppy seconds. I wanted my own adventure, so I put Warlock on my Christmas list.

I was hooked on gaming books for years. Deathtrap Dungeon was a particular favourite of mine - and I read it multiple times - along with the Mad Max-esque Freeway Fighter,.

It was easier than reading a proper book - and with that in mind, I later wrote my final O Level English essay on the Lone Wolf choose-your-own-adventure series. And before you mock me: I got a C. And my preparation only took me about a tenth of the time it took everyone else. So in your face, everyone who spent months trying to get through To Kill A Mockingbird or Of Mice And Men; I read my book in about an hour. And it had monsters in it.

​But proper role-playing would soon grab me, and the obsession continued into my early-20s. Like many youths, I was familiar with the term "rolling-up", but - unlike most of them - for me it referred to the process of role-playing game character generation.

For reasons I never fully understood, I started going to church in my early-teens. I'd become friends with a boy at school - later nicknamed "Delightful Spread" - who'd encouraged me to come along with him one Sunday.

I'd never been religious. My family only ever went to church when somebody got married or died. But school wasn't always easy, and the church gave me a peer group where I wasn't the butt of everyone's jokes. People there were nice. A surprising number of them were like me - not particularly into religion, but simply looking for something to belong to. A couple of them were, incongruously, punks.

Going to church - as I ended up doing for about three years - gave me two things. Firstly, it ultimately turned me against religion, and confirmed that I didn't believe in any omnipotent cloud dude, and wasn't going to let myself be brainwashed by some old book. Secondly, it introduced me to a bunch of people who were into role-playing games.

LEVEL UPAt first I was part of a long-running Advanced Dungeons & Dragons campaign, with "Delightful Spread" and the Churchies (which sounds like it could've been a 1950s doo-wop group).

My main character was a ranger called Harthor the Hound, and I don't care if you find that funny. He was a better man than you'll ever be, and he owned a bear.

If you've never done tabletop role-playing, it begins the same as any video game RPG - you "roll-up" your character with dice, then head out on adventures, earning experience points to spend on new skills. There's no winning, just surviving.

The Dungeon Master - or Games Master - becomes your eyes and ears. Any potential use of your skills or abilities requires another dice roll.

The rule-books - the Dungeon Masters Guide, the Monster Manual, the Players Handbook - were like ancient artefacts to me, containing the hallowed knowledge. I read them and re-read them and re-read them. It was decades before I made the link between Dungeons & Dragons and Tolkien; as far as I was concerned, the game's creator Gary Gygax had come up with it all by himself.

The "Gelatinous Cube" was my favourite Advanced D&D creature - basically, a giant cube of jelly, like you get in a packet from the supermarket... only much bigger and more deadly. As I later found out, it was one of but a handful of the game's creations not to have been lifted from Lord of the Rings.

I visited my sister in America in 1983, where she and her husband - Jim Bob - were living on Edwards Air Force Base, in the Mojave Desert. She had a neighbour who, like Jim Bob, was in the USAF. He looked exactly like Ned Flanders - one evening, he and invited me over for a game of D&D with him and his wife.

Once I'd sold my Star Wars toys, getting a new RPG rulebook was literally the most exciting present I could imagine. The second most exciting present was a set of new dice; D8s, D12s, D20s...​Sometimes I'd play a character, but generally I'd prefer being the GM - or Games Master (no relation), because it let me tell stories.

I'd spend the whole week from Tuesday to Tuesday preparing for the next RPG session. Writing up ideas, drawing characters and maps...

Yet despite all the preparation, I'd always end up winging it on the fly.

Even though I would go through the motions of rolling dice, behind my GM's screen, I never let it get in the way of the story. I enjoyed the improvised nature of it, having to think on the go, and not rely too heavily on rules or structure. Generally, I'd roll the dice and ignore the outcome in favour of the narrative.

I'm the same now. I like to be surprised by story as it pours out of my brain. Planning is counter-intuitive... and probably the hardest part of my day job.

I TUE-TUE-TUES YOUI lived for those Tuesday nights though.

Frequently, we'd set up for the role-playing, but never get around to it. On a handful of occasions, we'd do something else entirely - play hide-and-seek in the dark, for example, if Phil's parents were out. During one of these games, I found a tube of grouting and used it to glue a loofah to the bath. Phil was understandably furious. His father was a stumpy little Marxist, and I always got the sense Phil lived in fear of his temper, and being beaten with a copy of The Socialist Worker.

On another occasion, Phil lent me his copy of Herzog Zwei on the Mega Drive, and I ended up losing it. Suffice to say, I was a terrible friend, and he stopped talking to me shortly afterwards.

The role-playing nights continued for a while longer, because Phil's brother was also part of a group, but gradually they came to a halt.

Everyone's lives started heading in different directions, as they tend to do. Before long, there was nobody left local to me who played games. There were no more regular sessions, and then there were no sessions at all. Some time back, I bought my daughter the AD&D rulebooks - in the hope that she might get her friends interested, and then I'd have a new group to play with, but she never took it up.

​"No dice," as they say.

Video game RPGs aren't the same. They're too restrictive, they lack the go-anywhere/do-anything power of the human imagination. It's harder to improvise, except within the parameters of the game. Sure, you can talk to people via a headset, but it's not the same as sitting around a table with a bunch of mates and snacks.

Your GW diss cuts to the quick, Biffo. I write for them (I'm in the office now, reading your words instead of writing my own) and one of the reasons I write for a living is your influence.

I might as well jack it all in and lie face-down on the floor until I succumb to the sweet embrace of death. Senpai hates me :(

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Mr Biffo

3/6/2016 10:29:09 am

Oh man! It's not a diss against GW in the slightest! I used to play Warhammer 40k a lot, and collected the figures.

Not that I was very good at painting them. Though I did mount a big laser cannon from a Zoid on the back of a Space Marine - but my mates banned me from using it, because it would've given me too much of an advantage. Also found a effective way of putting laser marks and bullet holes in vehicles, by straightening out a paperclip and heating it over the gas stove - and then puncturing the side of my Rhin with it.

So - pah! - I couldn't possibly mock GW. Also, they did the best paints. The one nearest me shut down though. :-(

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Mr Biffo

3/6/2016 10:29:25 am

Also, I want your job.

Mr Biffo

3/6/2016 10:33:03 am

"My Rhin" should've had an "O" on the end.

TW

3/6/2016 08:34:10 pm

I'm a designer at GW, can I join you on the floor?

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Chris

3/6/2016 12:39:23 pm

I'm not sure that the market has declined, in fact. Because the growth of geeky hobbies in general has grown, the RPG market has also grown, albeit the computer games industry has grown much faster.

There was a decent renaissance around 2000 with the release of the 3rd Edition of D&D. They opted to make 90% of the rules available under a licence that meant you could have them for free, and you could publish your own material for profit based on those rules. That led to Pathfinder, and the industry has been supporting two major fantasy roleplaying games for a while now (though I'm not sure it'll last).

Much like the recent explosion in boardgames, Kickstarter has a lot to do with the breadth of RPGs available these days. There's much less risk associated with self-publication , and as you rightly point out, RPGs allow you a much greater degree of freedom than any videogame can. If anything, major games have become *more* restrictive as they try to find the comfortable middle ground.

In conclusion, Tabletop's golden age has yet to come..

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Mr Biffo

3/6/2016 01:19:57 pm

I hope so. I just wish I had geekier mates nearby. Waaah.

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Clockwork Fool

3/6/2016 06:26:03 pm

Sometimes that means putting some more effort in and taking a bit of a leap. Find one of those surviving local gaming stores and ask if anything's going on. Or try looking on Meetup.com, loads of friendly groups on their, Biff.

There's plenty of geekery out their old chap. You just need to go to it.

Mr Biffo

3/6/2016 08:50:50 pm

Pfffft. You expect me to travel?!?

Clockwork Fool

4/6/2016 10:31:35 pm

Yes.

That's how it works.

RichardM

3/6/2016 12:48:01 pm

Have you seen any of the Penny Arcade Dungeons & Dragons stuff, Biffus? Acquisitions Incorporated. They all seem to be having a good time.

And see their DM, Chris Perkins, doing D&D with some UK people: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-FeiNEsLElA
Graham Linehan doesn't seem wholly comfortable in such close proximity to the guy off the One Show.

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Mr Biffo

3/6/2016 01:20:47 pm

I have not seen that! I will do some further exploration.

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Hamptonoid

3/6/2016 12:55:02 pm

Have you checked out the lone wolf app in the Google play store? It is excellent, and takes care of all of the tedious inventory taking etc. And it's free!

I tried to do various tabletop groups. I started in a D&D group but tried to do more WhiteWolf because of the simpler fomat. Geist: The Sin-Eaters was a favorite because it was set in/around Philadelphia and we had passing knowledge of the area.

No one really wanted to GM so I said, well, I'll give it a shot.

And my players... didn't know what to do. I don't know if the story was too open-ended to video games with clear objectives left them at a loss for thinking for themselves or what... but coaxing my players to do anything became a challenge.

Once in school, during lunch, we tried to run an F# game that was made up as we went. My one friend killed an innkeeper and took over the inn and another punched a rabies bat out of the air.

and so it goes... but it was a ton of fun and we still talk about it to today. When I GM I love rolling with the punches players give me. Sometimes I would stop to think and players would ask if what they did was okay... "No it's fine I just need to figure out what that means."

I remember my D&D character well, I was a half-gnome bard. As a player I brought an instrument I made from a tissue box, rubber bands and Popsicle sticks. I sort-of turned it by ear to B or Bb (not well). The GM questioned his life choices at that point.

(now I own and can play the xaphoon so...)

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SweetMrGibs

3/6/2016 03:11:59 pm

Mr Biffo, are you me?! By which I mean you're 44 and I'M 44. You read 'Deathtrap Dungeon' and so did I! Crazy, right? I bet you poo too, just like me (well, perhaps not quite like me - unless you make this noise whilst doing 'the deed' > "huuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrr... splashback!")

Anyway, very enjoyable piece. My favourite Fighting Fantasy book was 'House of Hell'. Hated 'Starship Traveller', mind. I only have so many hands (two) with which to return to the 'safe page' as I called it.

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Mr Biffo

3/6/2016 08:49:56 pm

You discovered my secret. Yes... I AM you.

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peter_cushion

6/6/2016 12:11:30 pm

Are you me too? I'm sure this is me. I was DM for Palladium and had an amazing time going through an expansion called The Old Ones - sort of Cthulhu type fellas. I think it's made us all better people.

The industry probably isn't as big or as profitable as it was in the early 80's but it's still there and seems to be doing well. Dungeons and Dragons has splintered and you have D&D itself being published by Hasbro, and then Pathfinder being published by the people who used to publish Dungeon magazine for Hasbro. Those are the big names.

Pathfinder's a revised version of a previous edition of D&D -- in this case the third edition that was current from 2000 to 2008 -- and there's also a whole sub-genre of games derived from earlier editions. Some are direct clones of AD&D or the old red boxed set, or whatever, but some take those as a starting point and then spin off in a new direction. There's one chap, Kevin Crawford of Sine Nomine Publishing who has put out space opera, cyberpunk, and horror games all based on the D&D chassis, for example.

You've also got the indie movement, which crosses over a bit with the old school revival with some of the same people cropping up. That's where you're likely to find more high-concept games, or games that put a greater emphasis on storytelling, or unique mechanics, and so on. This is where things like Burning Wheel, Fiasco, Fate, or The Mountain Witch come from.

The big thing about both the indie and old school movements is that they are both healthy and vibrant; yes, there are stereotypical game nerds in there who only play first edition AD&D by the rules and play the same official adventures they've been playing since 1978, but in my experience that's not what the community as a whole is like any more.

(And not that there's anything wrong with the above, either; if that's what you enjoy, good for you.)

There's a big international community on Google Plus, where the social networking and video conference tools mean that people can play online with others from all over the world. The rise of easy to use self-publishing tools means that you can have a thriving publishing environment that is independent of the big companies, not that there are any big companies these days. All in all, role-playing games seem to be doing quite well.

You should get involved in a G+ game Biffo, and see what it's like. I've only done it a couple of times but I had great fun.

By the way, I love the story of learning AD&D at a church group. That's going to confuse the Americans no end.

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Mr Biffo

3/6/2016 08:48:39 pm

Maaaaaybe. It feels a bit weird doing it online, though. I loved being sat around a real table.

In that case, the advice the Clockwork chap gave you about meetup.com is good. I'm sure you'll be able to find a group or club near you.

Kendall9000

3/6/2016 05:43:51 pm

Deathtrap Dungeon? Meh!

I notice you don't even mention playing Steve Jackson's epic Sorcery! tetralogy, let alone beating all four parts without cheating. That had dice rolls and character classes and spells to memorise and everything. Just like D&D without the inconvenience of having to befriend other humans.

Obviously too hardcore for a filthy gamebook casual.

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Mr Biffo

3/6/2016 05:50:00 pm

Shove your dice up your cracksie, you gamebook zealot.

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Cc

3/6/2016 06:02:23 pm

Please more tales of Harthor the Hound. Anyone with a pet bear has got to have had a few scrapes.

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Mr Biffo

3/6/2016 08:47:48 pm

Write your own fan fiction. His best friend was a bard called "Gabby Blarin".

You forgot to mention the joys of the hairy pork scratching on those Tuesday nights...

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Chris

4/6/2016 08:39:25 pm

Is it just a coincidence this was written on the same day UK Games Expo kicked off? Lots of RPG action going on there, just sign up and turn up.

But, yeah, for the rest of the year definitely look on Meetup. Lots of friendly gaming groups of all types.

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Acid_Arrow

6/6/2016 01:42:23 pm

Fighting Fantasy books were great but I couldn't be bothered with all the dice stuff so I just pretended I won every fight. In fact I didn't pretend, I did win, easily.

The first one I saw was Citadel of Chaos too, at a friend's house, however I didn't know what Chaos meant and thought it was the name of the city (which I presumed is what "citadel" meant) and pronounced it "Chahhh - ose" with the "Ch" as in Church. Pretty cool eh?